


Hunter and Hunted

by yhlee (etothey)



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 14:12:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17143238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/yhlee
Summary: Achilles' pursuit doesn't go the way he thought it would.





	Hunter and Hunted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Oshun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oshun/gifts).



I did not conceive of it as a hunt for until we went into Chiron's care, but it was a hunt from the beginning.

I remembered the first time we had met, Patroclus and I. Sometimes I wondered if he remembered it; but I would not bring it up if he didn't, and he made no mention of it. He had made no great impression on me then, except in the way that all princes did, as men I would have to treat with in the future: dark-haired, slight, looking as though he wanted to fidget if not for the weight of his father's presence.

I had been more interested in the wreath, then. It made a fine prize. Though I knew myself the best of the runners even before the race began, I valued it as an affirmation of my divine blood.

Still--years later--I remembered the way he had looked, stubborn, stilted. _Not the way a prince should be,_ some of the runners had murmured among themselves when his father wasn't present. _That_ intrigued me, because it was true. Patroclus did not, in fact, look like a warrior, or someone who might grow into one.

I went home with Peleus my father. The wreath dried up, as wreaths do. But that memory remained.

And then for more years I thought no more of the unprincely boy until he showed up at my father's hall.

I'd heard something of the negotiations, and the incident that had made it necessary for Patroclus to go into exile. Gold was always valuable, even if, as one of my father's advisors remarked, an ungrown boy's weight didn't amount to much. Later, that same advisor remarked on the lyre.

"For all that Menoitius likes to boast of his wealth," the advisor said, frowning at the lyre with its gilded tips, "he is willing enough to cheat us of our due."

I had wandered over to the lyre. I plucked one of the strings. The note rang out, flat, but with a tone like sun-warmed honey. "It is a fine instrument," I said.

My father, who had been listening to the advisor with his usual patience, turned to me. "It is yours, then," he said, and that settled that matter.

I was wondering if Patroclus would surprise me again when he met me for the second time, in my father's palace. I asked his name not because I didn't know it but because I wanted to hear him say it. I had expected him to defend himself, deny that he'd done anything wrong, debase himself--anything but stiff correctness. That itself was a surprise. But I did not wish to press--not yet.

Besides, the hunt was pleasurable, such as it was. I watched him; it was my prerogative to watch whoever I pleased among the boys. My father pressed me now and again to select a companion. It would only be fitting, he said, that I should have the counsel of a boy my age, and one who owed our line gratitude besides. But none of them interested me. None of them--but him.

In his turn, Patroclus watched me. He grew more subtle about it after the first time I caught him at it, saw the blush rise in his cheeks. For a time this contented me, watcher watching the watched, and around and around it went. I always wondered what he would do next.

Finally I approached, because we had settled into a pattern, and I meant to break him out of it. I brought figs, my favorites. I juggled for him. It came to me easily the way many things did, the way my muscles knew what to do. I could tell, even then, that Patroclus, like the other boys, had to work at anything that mattered to him.

I did not know, when I threw the fig to Patroclus, whether he would try to catch it. Perhaps he would. Perhaps he would let it drop. Perhaps he would throw it back. All the other boys--I knew their measure. I knew they would do whatever they thought would please me. But Patroclus did not care about pleasing me. Not then.

My heart sang within me when he lifted his palms to catch the fig, and again when he bit into the plump flesh. He had not rejected the overture, small as it was. And for the first time I wondered what it would be like to kiss him, to taste the fig's sweet juice from the chalice of his mouth.

But the overture failed, and he foiled me again. He stopped attending arms practice. I could guess at what haunted him, but I could not know, not unless he told me himself. The boys gossiped freely about him, what time I spent around them. I knew all the ugly things they said.

When I found him in the storeroom, I intended only to find out whether he had fallen ill, nothing more. Our game of stolen glances could wait until he was better. Even if the malady was simply moodiness.

And there he turned the game around on me. I had thought him cornered. Instead I found myself treed; that I was the one hunted. I was not sure I liked it. Everyone in the realm of men deferred to me; but then, if he had deferred to me too, I would not have been interested in him. I could admit that.

My heart beat no faster than usual as I led him toward the room where I took my music lessons, but no slower either. I wanted to ask a hundred things. Did Patroclus play the lyre, or sing? Had he expected his gambit to succeed? Who had given the beautiful lyre to him?

I wanted to say a hundred things, too. _I have kept the lyre perfectly tuned. I have played it every day thinking of you._ When I drew my fingers over the strings I thought of running my hands through his hair. There were songs I composed, wordless and winding. I did not know if they would offend him. He was touchy sometimes, and always, always, hard to predict.

I did not say any of these things. He would speak, or not, when he was ready.

The lyre had a meaning to him. I had offended him after all, by touching it, by taking it away from him. It was owed to my father, and my father had given it to me. By all rights it was mine.

I vowed then that I would make the lyre a thing of pleasure for him again, and not a reminder of the home he had lost. That I would make of the melody a snare and capture his heart within it. But as I played, as I sang, he leaned forward, watching me intently with those eyes, and I knew. I knew that I was the one captured.


End file.
